Almost every Tuesday during the legislative session, University of Houston Chancellor Renu Khator heads to Austin, where she spends the day in meetings with lawmakers, members of the media and administrators who look out year-round for the university's interests at the Capitol. For nearly 40 years, Tuesday also has been a day of fasting for the chancellor, a practicing Hindu.

Although she admits that a long day without nourishment can leave her a bit cranky, she also knows that the Austin trips are crucial, since she and university administrators around the state have much more to worry about than weekly hunger pangs. With the 82nd session of the Texas Legislature lurching to an end, the very mission of the public university is under threat, as lawmakers ponder drastic cuts in funding and the governor's office raises provocative questions about the value of research and its relationship to teaching.

For Khator, who serves as chancellor of the University of Houston System and president of the central campus, the challenges are particularly worrisome, in light of the university's perch on the cusp of prestigious Tier 1 status as a major teaching and research institution. Even under the best scenario, lawmakers this session are making that goal more difficult to reach. Their actions also threaten to make the fast-growing university less accessible to thousands of students and a tuition increase likely.

The skirmishes between Gov. Rick Perry and the state's higher education institutions seem to have affected UH only peripherally. The governor has been pressing his appointees to the boards of regents at the state's universities to adopt higher education policies dubbed the "Seven Breakthrough Solutions" by Austin businessman Jeff Sandefer, who promotes the ideas as a more effective pathway to a lower-cost college degree.

"The message was clear," said state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, alluding to a meeting of regents Perry convened in 2008. "Go forth and implement these policies — the seven policies - which I refuse to call breakthroughs, which they are not, and I refuse to call solutions, because they are not, or reforms, because they are not."

Faculty and alumni groups at UT-Austin and at Texas A&M University, as well as lawmakers, pushed back.

Bringing in consultants

Zaffirini, who chairs the Senate Higher Education Committee and who has emerged as the chief scourge of the governor, agrees with Khator that UH has not been unduly pressured. She notes, however, that the university did hire consultants to explore Sandefer's ideas. UH spokesman Richard Bonnin said the consultants finished their work in January, and the contract was terminated in February.

"Guidance on the 'Seven Breakthrough Solutions' was only one component of the scope of their work," Bonnin added. "Much of their work was focused on developing a strategic plan for advancing our progress toward obtaining full Tier One status."

Khator said she was much more concerned about the budget crisis and its effect on UH students. She said she and her fellow administrators started looking last fall for ways to achieve operational efficiencies - eliminating $750,000 worth of cell phone expenses on the central campus and redoing utility contracts, among other cost-saving measures. The operational savings totaled $21 million.

She also eliminated 158 faculty and staff positions - with more to come - and instituted "slow hiring."

She could not have imagined that budget-burdened Texas lawmakers would approve a two-year funding bill that would cut higher education across the state by as much as $1.7 billion. That's the House version; the Senate version is not quite as drastic.

Planning for a shortfall

Regardless of how lawmakers reconcile the two bills, the consequences will be grave for a university system serving more than 63,000 students. The state's third-largest university may be looking at a budget cut of $81 million.

A 5-percent budget cut may have been something of an impetus for change, Khator said recently. "At this level, at a 16-percent, 18-percent budget cut, it's just devastating."

Khator, soft-spoken and unfailingly courteous, is not one to complain vociferously, although she did tell the Senate Finance Committee earlier in the session that a 16 percent cut would be the equivalent of losing 9,300 students, offering 1,220 fewer courses and losing between 300 and 400 faculty members.

For UH students, the most immediate consequence of a drastic cut in state funding likely will be a tuition increase, perhaps as much as 7 percent. According to UH spokesman Bonnin, the board of regents will make a decision once the legislature finalizes the 2012-13 budget.

"Our students just cannot afford it," Khator said. "I know it, and I very much fear it."

Even as tuition goes up, financial aid is going down, with lawmakers looking to cut the popular TEXAS Grant program for needy students.

"We get close to $20 million a year in TEXAS Grants for the System," Khator said. "We serve a student body who really needs the help with financial aid, and we put together a package for them in a collaborative partnership - Pell Grants, TEXAS Grants and needs-based scholarships. If one partner walks away - we have no TEXAS Grants - then it leaves a huge hole. And that hole may be big enough that the student may decide that college is not for him."